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Cryptocurrency arose, and grew in popularity, following the financial crisis of 2008 built upon a promise of decentralizing money and payments. An examination of the history of money and banking in the United States demonstrates that stable money benefits from strict controls and commitments by a centralized government through chartering restrictions and a broad safety net, rather than decentralization. In addition, financial crises happen when the government allows money creation to occur outside of official channels. The US central bank is then forced into a policy of supporting a range of money-like assets in order to maintain a grip on monetary policy and some semblance of financial stability.

In addition, this chapter argues that cryptocurrency as a form of shadow money shares many of the problematic attributes of both the privately issued bank notes that created instability during the “free banking” era and the “shadow banking” activities that contributed to the 2008 crisis. In this sense, rather than being a novel and disruptive idea, cryptocurrency replicates many of the systemically destabilizing aspects of privately issued money and money-like instruments.

This chapter proposes that, rather than allowing a new, digital “free banking” era to emerge, there are better alternatives. Specifically, it argues that the Federal Reserve (Fed) should use its tools to improve public payment systems, enact robust utility-like regulations for private digital currencies and limit the likelihood of bubbles using prudential measures.

South Africa had formally introduced a policy of inflation targeting (IT) in February 2000. By December 2001, the governor of the South African Reserve Bank, after reading the latest statistics, was concerned with the disappointing economic data. Economic activity had slowed drastically, to the point that the country appeared to be heading for a recession. The gloomy statistics forced the governor to consider whether the country had pursued the right policy. Persistently high unemployment, one legacy of the apartheid era, meant that South Africa did not have the luxury of waiting for new policies to bear fruit. With the inflation forecast to exceed the mandated target, the governor would have to tighten monetary policy, which would further restrict investment. Was it is time for South Africa to change course?

This study aims to explore farmers’ perceptions of environmental impacts of dairying and their practices towards implementing environmental management accounting (EMA) techniques.

Semi-structured interviews were held with five dairy farmers in the South Island of New Zealand (NZ).

Dairy farmers perceive environmental sustainability in dairying as being able to feed people while protecting the environment so that future generations can also enjoy the natural world. Recognising the need to alter their practices to reduce environmental damage they have produced, dairy farmers use some EMA techniques, but the primary motivation is compliance with government regulations. Other motivations for using EMA techniques are high economic returns, maintaining their reputation and self-satisfaction. Barriers to implementing EMA techniques are primarily due to lack of clarity and feasibility of regulations, coercion and inadequate communication by regulators and high compliance costs.

The findings contribute to the current EMA literature by providing a better understanding of EMA practices of dairy farmers in NZ, barriers to implementing EMA and how those barriers could be reduced. It may also help NZ central and local government in developing environmental strategies and policies. Furthermore, this research is expected to help people in the dairy industry to find ways to educate farmers about how the measures that are required can help them to reduce both the environmental impacts and the costs of dairying, thus contributing to sustainable development globally.

Bank lending is the major source of monetary expansion. Bank-led money creation is a key issue in both conventional and Islamic financial systems. The purpose of this paper is to examine the issues related to Islamic banking money creation. In this conceptual paper, the authors investigate the involvement of profit and loss sharing (PLS) in money creation and especially how can PLS limit money creation “out of nothing.” In this regard, the authors examine the potential of the PLS principle in tackling the excessive money creation phenomenon.

This study uses a normative approach regarding Islamic bank money creation that fits Sharia directives. In fact, this study discusses “what ought to be,” that is, the values and norms of PLS money creation that impede excessive money creation.

Overall, Islamic banks create money differently compared to conventional ones. Especially, by avoiding a purely financial intermediary, money creation under the PLS principle sustains a strong relationship with the real economy and leads to a lower money multiplier. Therefore, PLS mechanisms allow financing through real assets and not credit assets “out of nothing.” This could prevent excessive money creation from causing harmful effects on indebtedness and financial instability.

PLS offers a valuable resolution for banking system money creation through the optimization of Islamic bank financing by facilitating the separation of the monetary function from the credit one. This reform thought reinforces the stability value of money allowing it to fully perform its functions with reference to the directives of Sharia. This especially allows the integrity and purchasing power of money, the reduction of the gap between the evolution of both real and financial economies and, consequently, the indebtedness and crisis. It is recommended to promote PLS financing by reforming institutional and regulatory constraints.

This study addresses the contemporary issue of money creation by Islamic banks through the PLS approach. The conceptual framework of this paper highlights the reformist role of PLS in limiting money creation through Mudarabah approach within fractional reserve banking.

This chapter focuses on critical thinking as a new, powerful, and specialized tool and technique for understanding and analyzing the subtle operations of the free enterprise capitalist market system and its ethics and morality. Everything in the world of consumers and market enterprise systems are determined by our supply–demand system that in turn are determined by our presumed limitless production–distribution and consumption (LDPC) systems. From a critical thinking viewpoint, we study the free enterprise capitalist system (FECS) as a dynamic, interconnected organic system and not as a discrete or compartmentalized body of disaggregate parts. Systems thinking with critical thinking calls for a shift of our mindset from seeing just parts to seeing the whole reality in its structured dynamic unity; both mandate that we see ourselves as active participators or partners of FECS and not as mere cogs in its wheels or as mere factors of its production processes. Critical thinking seeks to identify the “structures” that underlie complex situations in FECS with those that bring about high- versus low-leveraged changes in various versions of capitalism. Specifically, this chapter applies critical thinking to FECS as defined by its founder, Adam Smith, in 1776 to its fundamental and structural assumptions, and as supported or critiqued by serious scholars such as Karl Marx, Maynard Keynes, C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond (inclusive capitalism), John Mackey and Rajendra Sisodia (conscious capitalism), and others.

Free banking theory, as developed in Adam Smith’s 1776 treatise, “The Wealth of Nations” is a useful tool in determining the extent to which the “invisible hand of the market” should prevail in regulatory policy. The purpose of this study is to provide a timely review of the literature, evaluating the theory’s relevance to regulation of financial technology generally and cryptocurrencies (cryptos) specifically.

The methodology is qualitative, applying free banking theory as developed in the literature to technology-defined environments. Recent legislative developments in the regulation of cryptocurrencies in the UK, European Union and the USA, are drawn upon.

Participants in volatile cryptocurrency markets should bear the consequences of inadvisable investments in accordance with free banking theory. The decentralised nature of cryptocurrencies and the exchanges on which these are traded militate against coordinated oversight by central banks, supporting a qualified free banking approach. Differences regarding statutory definitions of cryptos as units of exchange, tokens or investment securities and the propensity of these to transition between categories across the business cycle render attempts at concerted classification at the international level problematic. Prevention of criminality through extension of Suspicious Activity Reporting to exchanges and intermediaries should be the principal objective of policymakers, rather than definitions of evolving products that risk stifling technological innovation.

The study proposes that instead of a traditional regulatory approach to cryptos, which emphasises holders’ safety and compensation, a free banking approach combined with a focus on criminality would be a more effective and pragmatic way forward.

The COVID19 crisis has thrown wide open the debate on Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union’s (EMU) future. Next Generation EU (NGEU) has broken the stalemate over a central fiscal capacity. The open question is whether NGEU is a one-off or a first step. The suspension of the Stability and Growth Pact has given new urgency to the debate on reforming EMU’s fiscal rules.

There is no debate as yet about how these two prospects relate to each other. This paper argues that a permanent fiscal capacity and revised rules should be seen as alternatives.

This study makes two claims: first, a fiscal capacity renders a reformed pact unnecessary and second, that is an optimal solution politically. A fiscal capacity would provide an efficient asymmetric shock absorber and therefore reduce the need for pre-emptive action against negative cross-border externalities. It would also provide an abundant supply of an EU-wide safe asset around which to structure the EU’s financial system, thus rendering unnecessary the backstopping of member states' debts.

This would restore democratic accountability while eliminating moral hazard and enforcement problems.

Financial instability and economic crises are closely intertwined. There is no universally accepted definition. The term ‘stability’ or ‘instability’ refers to the behaviour of the system rather than to individual institutions. However, one cannot rule out that failure of a single financial institution can trigger significant financial turmoil as was happened in 2007–08 global financial crises. Like unstable equilibrium, instability implies inability to correct itself on its own. Instability, if it persists, turns into a crisis. In the above backdrop, the objective of this chapter is to investigate the financial crises and instability viewed both from economic and international political economy perspectives with a tale of four generation crisis models as it has been evolved over time to explain the phenomenon of different types of crises.